Title IV-E Foster Care Service Providers Trainings

Title IV-E Program offers free training to San Francisco Human Services Agency staff who work with youth in foster care, group home staff, foster family agency staff, and foster parents in San Francisco.

Most classes can be offered at an agency’s site on weekdays, evenings, or Saturdays with a minimum of 8 guaranteed participants attending the training. Agencies can select topics that are currently offered or request new workshops. Our faculty can customize workshops that fit your agency's needs.

For eligibility questions and more information about scheduling classes, please contact Lynne Towe, Title IV-E Project Director at 415-267-6570 or email ltowle@ccsf.edu

To register for Title IV-E classes: Email fcstrain@ccsf.edu. Call 415-267-6523 if you have questions about a scheduled class.

Learn more about the issues that caregivers struggle with as they attempt to support and manage challenging child behaviors. While it is necessary to understand the function of the child's behaviors (since it is a communication to us) in order for ANY parenting strategies to be effective, the focus is on how we can support caregivers better before they burnout. It is difficult for youth to be removed from the home, whether from biological or foster parents, so we need to be able to understand, assess, and support caregivers in this difficult journey! If we can’t understand and support the caregiver, they will not be able to support their kids in a healthy way!

When working with families with few resources in their lives, traumatic pasts, and challenged relationships within their families, it can be easy to feel some of the same loss of hope that many of them experience and to become overwhelmed with what to focus on next. Bring in the case that you are most stuck with and let’s trouble shoot together some things that you can try in your next session! This is a special training to try to get “unstuck” at least for your next session

Few supervisors or managers have had training in providing supervision; rather, most learn on the job. Supervisors/managers specifically will focus on understanding the basic skills necessary to provide effective and supportive supervision for staff who work with kids in foster care. Study issues including team building, strength-based management, boundaries, accountability and, most importantly, how to help your staff avoid “burn out” by facilitating their awareness of what they are bringing to the work. Anyone who provides supervision or is a manager, is welcome to attend.

Teens involved in the child welfare and the juvenile justice systems often experience overwhelming amounts of stress and are clinically depressed. Adolescent suicide, a serious problem, is the second leading cause of death (following accidents) among youth and young adults in the US. Examine teen suicide warning signs, teenage depression, and techniques to help a teen through their depression and stress. Many teens suffering from depression report feeling as though they've lost the ability to imagine a happy future or remember a happy past. Often they don't realize they're suffering from a treatable illness and seeking help may not have entered their mind. Explore the types of depression, how it relates to teens, its causes, effects, symptoms, and signs; and the difference between depression and blues in teens. Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. Discuss the benefits to healthy stress and how it can affect our mind, body, and spirit. Examine tips on communicating with a stressed and depressed teen. Learn how you can make a difference!

Students address case assessment specific to exploring and identifying the underlying issues in the family including family violence, family needs, strengths, and resources. This case assessment prepares the worker to move forward with an effective case plan regarding how to support the youth in the safest and healthiest manner. Helping youth in foster care with these family challenges increases permanency planning (fewer placement failures) and reunification

The DSM 5 (fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has been implemented and used in licensing exams as of December, 2014. Examine a comprehensive overview of the DSM 5 with attention to changes relevant for youth service, child welfare, and juvenile justice providers. Study critical information for service providers including recognizing new diagnoses, understanding mental health reports, and working providers to ensure appropriate services. Review the history of the DSM and the origins of mental illness. Evaluate controversies in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders including the rising prevalence of mental disorders, the diagnosis of children and youth, and the overuse of psychotropic medications. Examine the organizational structure and changes in the DSM 5.

Explore the legal and ethical issues for providers in youth and family services and child welfare. Topics include an overview of liability issues and how to minimize liability. Review consent, confidentiality, practice issues in youth and child welfare services, and mandated reporting laws. Discuss ethical best practices and ethical decision making in working with youth and families. Review the NASW and CAMFT Codes of Ethics and the California Business and Profession Code with attention to professional conduct guidelines relevant to youth services and child welfare. This training meets the CA BBS CEU requirement for a Law and Ethics training for LCSWs and LMFTs.

Child welfare and youth in the juvenile justice system face extensive challenges in making a successful transition to adulthood. Explore an overview of the transition to adulthood for all people in our society between the ages of 16 and 24. Discuss the current transition outcome data for child welfare and youth in the juvenile justice system, the impact of AB 12/AB 212 extended care in supporting young adults, and the challenges they face. Review our progress in extended care and share the successes of young adults, effective practices and positive outcomes.

Review how to work effectively with youth and young adults to help them make a positive transition to independence. Discuss transition service needs including housing options, post-secondary education, family and permanency supports, employment, mental health, and preparing young adults for exiting extended. Examine case management and counseling practices for working with young adults including transition planning, engaging young adults in services, expanding permanency options, encouraging positive health care, and supporting education and employment . Obtain transition resources for young adults.

For years we have been told to be “strength-based and client centered”, however, we have not typically been told what this really means. In our field, we often focus on the negative events that have occurred or the pathology that a client and their family members seem to present with. We forget, in the midst of all of the difficulties, that everyone has strengths and abilities and good intentions. This training focuses on the importance of teaming with family members from the beginning and offers a variety of case plan strategies to create a family friendly process that will increase our ability to engage effectively with families who just don’t want to work with us! We will also clarify what it means in terms of our work to be “strength-based”.

Youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems are at an increased risk of being physically and sexually abused. Teenagers abused as children are three to four times more likely to be depressed and /or suicidal than teens that were never abused. (Sexual abuse carries the greatest risk for suicide.) Learn to recognize behaviors and thoughts associated with teased, bullied, physically and abused youth. Explore how abuse and trauma may impact sexual health, mental health, teenage pregnancy, teen rape, sexual identity, and attachment. Review contemporary research findings about physically and sexually abused youth and how to support these youth.

Youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems often experience extensive trauma in their backgrounds. Review the impact of trauma on youth development, including mental health and behavioral consequences. Discuss trauma related disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); complex trauma; reactive attachment disorder; disinhibited social engagement disorder; depression, and borderline personality. Review best practices for working with these youth such as building the relationship; meeting basic needs; motivating youth; and increasing the core competencies of self-esteem, communications, and coping skills. Explore treatment approaches and evidence-based practices for working with youth who have trauma-related disorders. Review cognitive and behavioral techniques and self-regulation skills that can support youth impacted by trauma.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth and young adults face extensive challenges in developing a positive identity, gaining acceptance and support, and making a successful transition to adulthood. Explore an overview of LGBTQ sexual identify development, the coming out process, involvement in the child welfare system, LGBTQ youth of color and transgender youth. Discuss psychosocial risk factors including family rejection, school safety, peer bullying and isolation, depression, suicide, and HIV. Participate in discussions and activities including videos of LGBTQ youth in out of home care. Review individual and family counseling approaches and residential care best practice guidelines for working effectively with LGBTQ youth and young adults. Discuss how to support LGBTQ youth in improving outcomes and making a successful transition to adulthood. We can make a positive difference in the lives of LGBTQ youth and young adults.

The DSM 5 (fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has been implemented and used in licensing exams as of December, 2014. Examine a comprehensive overview of the DSM 5 with attention to changes relevant for youth service, child welfare, and juvenile justice providers. Study critical information for service providers including recognizing new diagnoses, understanding mental health reports, and working providers to ensure appropriate services. Review the history of the DSM and the origins of mental illness. Evaluate controversies in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders including the rising prevalence of mental disorders, the diagnosis of children and youth, and the overuse of psychotropic medications. Examine the organizational structure and changes in the DSM 5.